Daily Archives: November 6, 2005

I’m taking a little break from working on the novel to waste a few words on a progress update. I didn’t write at all yesterday, so I started the afternoon with about 3,400 words to write in order to make today’s goal of 10,002 words. At present, I’ve got a little less than 800 words to go, and I’m feeling pretty confident that I can knock those out in the next hour or so, once I figure out exactly what the next scene should be.

On Friday, I introduced the second female character: Doctor Jennifer Allston. She’s one of eight scientists assisting The Director with his current pet project. Of the remaining seven, only one (Doctor Nhiraj) has been given a name. Doctor Allston suddenly developed an English accent late this afternoon, which led to me going back and adding a couple lines of dialogue in her very first scene, just because I like women with English accents. Doctor Allston appears to have several assistants and one roommate. She also recently dated a computer programmer who was incredibly boring.

The first female character hasn’t actually made an appearance yet, though she’s been mentioned twice. She is Tina Gaunt, my protagonist’s wife. All we know about Tina is that she wears musky perfumes (as opposed to flowery), she’s filed a missing persons report on her husband, and The Director has operatives watching her. She may also, now that I see her name in print, share her name with my first music teacher’s wife. I could be wrong on that.

Late last week, it was established that my protagonist, Ted Gaunt, had been thrown out of a plane at some point in the past. This afternoon I learned that the thrower was one Darius Trask: asshole. The circumstances surrounding the throwing have not been revealed, though the outcome was a shattered patella, which hurt quite a lot.

Speaking of Ted Gaunt, it’s been well established that he has something of a potty mouth. Today, he developed vertigo and an irrational fear of needles. He likes John Coltrane and sausage links, has something of a mischievous personality, isn’t used to having six-pack abs, and can crush your skull with his mind.

And that’s almost four hundred words right there. If those had been novel words I’d be halfway done with what I need to write tonight.

I didn’t write yesterday because of the baby shower. I’ll have more to say on that later, but I will say this right now: Any day I get to eat sloppy joe is a good day.